Imagination, also called the faculty of imagining, is the ability of forming mental images, sensations and concepts, in a moment when they are not perceived through sight, hearing or other senses.

Imagination is the faculty through which we encounter everything. The things that we touch, see and hear coalesce into a "picture" via our imagination.

Imagination in this sense, not being limited to the acquisition of exact knowledge by the requirements of practical necessity, is, up to a certain point, free from objective restraints. The ability to imagine one's self in another person's place is very important to social relations and understanding.

Albert Einstein said, "Imagination…is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."[8]

Progress in scientific research is due largely to provisional explanations which are constructed by imagination, but such hypotheses must be framed in relation to previously ascertained facts and in accordance with the principles of the particular science.

It has also been proposed that the whole of human cognition is based upon imagination. That is, nothing that is perceived is purely observation but all is a morph between sense and imagination.

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Truthfinder:the birds adapt and change through million of years in order to survive ,is that science, then cats should evolve also wings to better catch the birdsMailbag:On a side note, back in college before my conversion, I actually saw a demon sitting next to me in critical thinking class.

Of course I do. It allows you to plan activities. It helps me to predict if I can catch my train or plane. It allows me to measure time intervals, e.g. during sports. With my watch I can do all sorts of things, which I couldn't without it.

I do all of those things and I haven't worn a watch since I was 15. Planning isn't the same as predicting. I use astrology to help me plan my days and months constantly, for the same reasons as you use a clock, just more subjectively. I don't try to say 'on such and such a day, there will be an oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico'. It's more like 'typically I can there are a lot of possibilities and irons in the fire as it gets closer to the full moon, and this time the full moon is in an important place for me, soo, I shouldn't put off the mundane things now because I won't have as much time later on'.

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That's the problem. They are not uncannily insightful.

That's not the problem for me. Study a few hundred charts and get back to me.

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They are just purposely ambiguous.

No more so than human personalities. It's not by design, it's by necessity.

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You can't read someones story just by knowing where and when he is born.

I do it all the time. It's not their story, it's a story that relates to them. Everyone has their own life, but you can describe various archetypal influences using birth date and time. It's a little like how a human genome can be used to understand the body, except that since the gene is a physical object which coded for the physical structure of the body and brain, it is highly deterministic but ultimately meaningless. The subjective side is comes from the opposite direction, top down meaning that is more open to interpretation.

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If you can, I suggest to show this to a related scientific community and see if your methods hold under scientific scrutiny. I am quite sure of the outcome, but if you have any proof science is certainly willing to listen.

Related to what? The department of debunking-whatever-we-refuse-to-identify?

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Science studies nature in a structured way because of curiosity in the first place and wanting to understand the world.

If you seek to understand the structured aspect of the universe, then structured curiosity is the way to go. If you want to understand everything that we can about the universe, we need to let the cosmos determine the structure as well.

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"That which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes–no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe."- John Archibald Wheeler

Do either of you have a problem with these excerpts from the definition of imagination?

Nope. Especially the part about "It has also been proposed that the whole of human cognition is based upon imagination. That is, nothing that is perceived is purely observation but all is a morph between sense and imagination." is exactly what I'm saying.

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"That which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes–no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe."- John Archibald Wheeler

has been
and
. You would get the same results by totally ignoring your charts, or randomly ordering them. You are believing in a science that has been debunked more than 300 years ago.

Haha, Randi and Dawkins talking about astrology is like the KKK and John Birch Society talking about affirmative action. But yes, every astrologer knows that astrology is statistically indistinguishable from randomness and that faking it works just as well. Does psychiatry and psychology fare any better? Many of our current treatments for serious illness result in similar success - a third getting better, one third getting worse, and a third staying the same.

Astrology and numerology remain the most fascinating and instructive subjects to me through my lifetime. I wouldn't trade either one of them for the entire educational content of my high school and college education put together. Your criticisms are valid - from the outside, objective side. All of the most interesting interior explorations are going to be inaccessible from the outside. It's only from the inside that these things can be experienced. Like a hallucinogen. Did you ever see
?.

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"That which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes–no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe."- John Archibald Wheeler

I'm not saying that it has to be better, just that it makes sense symmetrically [...]

I think I made sufficiently clear why I think this symmetry is no valid measure without further substantiation.

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That's part of the symmetry. QM demands no faith but offers no meaning either. QM won't tell you if you should move across country. QM doesn't know you exist. I Ching demands an openness to the idea that you yourself are accessible by the universe. I Ching seems to presciently observe you.

Except it demonstrably doesn't ... so where does that leave the recipient of its message?

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Yes, but it's also a classic example of the mechanism of pattern recognition itself. It is close to pareidolia except that rather than passively witnessing simulacra, you are consciously inviting them. It's a method of opening the door to the unconsious, intuition, and madness.

I'm still fuzzy on how not making a distinction as sharp as possible between valid patterns recognized and patterns recognized falsely (never even mind interpretation) is desireable, even when only trying to find stuff out about oneself.

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On the OMM vs ACME there's all kinds of claims that 'words aren't things' etc.

And they aren't, depending on your definition.

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Exactly. The difference though, is that since we are, 'inside' of ourselves, we have no reason to presume that there isn't some interior process going on within everything else.

If you mean consciousness, yes we do have some very strong indication that consciousness is strictly limited to neurological networks.If you mean some other interior process, please specify.

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I think it's entirely likely that even the atoms in the peptides in our brain have some glimmer of proto-interiority.

Something to back up that claim (as well as the implication that "interiority" is a productive and accurate concept)?

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Just as white light hides the full spectrum, ordinary matter may be part of a cosmic schema of meaning.

As may god. Where's the basis?

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That's not our definition, that's a property of universal visual logic. We can't imagine how another form of life would be able to conceive of it, let alone an organism evolve to that 'shape'. The universe can roll all the dice it wants and never come up with a square circle shaped anything. How can this be if squares and circles are purely invented by the human organism?

Nobody ever said anything about "purely invented" (didn't keep up with the thread you mentioned, though). I certainly am not. These are concepts that are custom-tailored to be descriptive of some aspect of reality. They are indeed a matter of definition; a circle is defined as an abstract shape with certain properties, as is the square.There's no logic without humanity; and it deals with the properties of the universe, so it's hardly astounding if circles are never squares. We will not find an electron that is also a proton. We will not find matter that is also antimatter. What does that prove?

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Not complementary, just symmetrical. Opposite.

See my first comment in this post. They're opposites if we apply certain concepts. What follows?

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Because the opposite of a clear method is an obscure method.

Obscure to whom? How can anyone be sure, even just for themselves, that what's obscure is indeed a method? It is, after all, obscure, and being symmetrical in some sense to clarity makes it neither workable nor desireable.

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That's what lively discourse is like. It'll all shake out in the digital ubermind sooner or later.

A productive discourse needs a shared method.

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It's a stereo worldview for a stereo Cosmos. I'm not the only one in on this, there's a few books along these lines already and something tells me you're going to see a lot more of them.

That sounds nice and all, but I fail to see any reason why we should think the cosmos is "stereo" rather than just is, with us in it.

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Because qualia runs on the 'opposite axis' from confirm-deny. You can't you confirm or deny that water feels wet, but nobody needs to do that, it's a completely inappropriate way to approach them. The wetness of water is what water is to 'us'. If you made a version of H2O that worked just like water but it looked like dishwater and felt like grease, it wouldn't be water.

Depending on definition, yes it would.Besides, why deal with qualia at all if "nobody needs to do that"?

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The OMM ignores that important architecture of the Cosmos and says 'water is H2O. Wetness is simply the neurological blah blah blah I know everything...' It takes qualia completely for granted.

Here we are at the start again; no, science does not claim to know everything about water. Certainly it does not claim to know everything, and its models nevery even attempt to adress qualia for exactly the philosophical problems you mentioned.It does claim that our perceptions are not part of the entire cosmos, nor necessarily directly representative of it. Wetness is not part of science because it can't be dealt with scientifically.

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No, I disagree. A circle is a figment of consciousness, not of the brain. Cut open a brain - no circle. It takes a conscious observer to interpret the activity of the conscious part of the brain.

That's why I said "brain functions", not "brain".

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Naturally. Just like a stomach needs to be able to process a variety of different kinds of food. Doesn't need to be conscious at all. Consciousness is just refined reflex, so why have a driver's seat? It's telling you what decisions to make anyways. It's giving you the wheel and the road and the driving lessons. Wtf does it need you for?

A stomach is not a living system; it's a necessary sub-system. If it's removed, it dies along with its "host".

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Through exploring numerology over the years, I know exactly why I perceive it as I perceive it. It's the third color of the spectrum. It has to do with the number three, and therefore I see yellow as an expression of joy, and of expression itself. It has to do with the third dimension, so surfaces and reflection, light and sound, piercing and penetration, fountains, flight, roller coasters, laughter, bubbles, injury and healing (surfaces, memory). It's a whole thing. Yellow communicates exactly what it is to us, it's no mystery. It's naive, optimistic, fragile, startling, silly, sweet, irritating... so very different when you speed it up to a tiny bit higher frequency you get Violet. Deep, meditative, 'different', mysterious, introspective. It's the seventh color of the spectrum - seven is a weird number.

And this is different from any new age religion how?I completely disagree; my subjective perceptions and opinions differ from yours. I don't call them "truth" though. Yellow has nothing to do with the number three other than arbitrary assignement. Seven is not a weird number other than when dealing with its mathematical properties. Just start counting in the infrared spectrum (or on the other side of the visible spectrum) and yellow is not the fourth number any more. Take binary or vigesimal counting system and suddenly other numbers are weird.I wouldn't use the word "exactly" either.

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It doesn't resolve visually, it's uncomfortable or numinous, wrestling between one form and the next. If it had a color, it would be violet, would it not? Cumbersome 7. Philosophical, scientific, obtuse. There's books published full of descriptions of this stuff.

It's "wrestling" because it's a shape that we haven't evolved to recognize. It does have colors; black and white. Apart from that, maybe a subjectively assigned color synaesthetic value. Not truth; perception again. Plus, you can do the exact same thing with nine points. Optical illusions don't even start to prove anything.

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I agree, but I think that the OMM posits that intuition doesn't exist or isn't important for the reason that it threatens locality.

Please stop coming up with new words I don't have definitions for.The existence of intuition is not in question; its viability as a method is, especially within conceptual frameworks owing their efficiency to filtering out subjective impressions.

I did now. It's dealing with how a quantum model may be a good representation of how plant metabolism works, and some stuff about evolutionary history (which I can't help but eye with suspicion owing to the site's character). Nothing about intuition in there.Depending on definition, however, I would agree that most if not all living system either posess intuition or something filling its role.

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Color has it's own logic. (See yellow above) Numerologically, black would be 0, white/entire spectrum would be 9. They have coherent meanings, but vary somewhat from culture to culture. Black or White is associated with death, funerals, marriage, silence, purity, formality...lots of stuff. I would be surprised if there were many people who do not consider black the opposite of white. It's not the periodic table but I would hardly characterize it as arbitrary http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/lessons/middle/color2.htm

The periodic table is arbitrary itself.And even the site you linked is talking about symbolism, not an innate color logic. (I wonder what ultraviolet stands for, as some people can perceive its lower spectrum, and where people get this logic - has it been shown to produce results akin to logic?).

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In scientific examinations of the exterior cosmos, sure. In the ordinary world of human consciousness the concept of opposite is one of the primary essentials.

Yes, and it does not necessarily tell us anything about ourselves that we didn't already know or about the universe as a whole. It's just a workable way of thinking, far from being perfect or representative of anything but our way of thinking. It may not even be the best available descriptive system.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP2SS8ggLtU[/youtube]

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unless you can show that the symmetry exists outside of language and abstract concepts.

not matter/antimatter? gravity/electromagnetism, acid/base, expand/shrink?[/quote]In many cases it has been shown that some symmetry exists outside of language - in fact, in many cases the words have been defined (or sometimes redefined) to fit in better with the observe universe. Matter and antimatter do have many things in common, but they're opposites in some relevant respects. Gravity is not opposite to electromagnetism; they too share many features.

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Right, not the nuomenal universe, but within the phenomenal cosmos the symmetries cross subjective and objective appearances.

Yes, and when I dream, I think I can fly. What of it?

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A circle is an elemental pattern, just as Helium is an elemental atomic pattern.

Ah. Well, there I agree to a point, but I should specify that what we call "atoms" are just models too.

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I think that the idea of God is just a simple model of the Self, but projected inside out. There is truth to it, not as it relates to the outside world, but that it reflects what the human psyche is. God is isn't just imaginary, it's the source of imagination held up in a mirror.

I agree there, but it doesn't answer my question. Can the existence of god be a meaningful personal truth? If so, how do we dinstinguish personal truth from any concept made-up on the spot?

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We have learned how to assign meaning to communicable patterns; they are not physical entities.If a number is objectively unreal, why wouldn't a circle be?

Because if it were, then you could make it a square circle.

You can. Simply redefine the words.Why would I be able to make a square circle if it were objectively unreal? I can't make a 1 a 2. Two concepts can be mutually exclusive rather easily.

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how about "We perceive it as such"?

Statistically approachable but not necessarily solvable. But sure, we've been doing this for a long time, within science, religion, philsophy, etc.We do not, however, perceive three as yellow, simply by virtue of me perceiving it as green - and that's not even a meaningful statement considering we haven't solved the qualia problem.

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Haha, no I haven't read VALIS. It's hard for me to commit to reading an actual book these days. I could see a crankenstein flavor to his work. I guess Stephen King did a lot of coke and wrote. I'm just the opposite, I get amped from writing and then I can't get to sleep.

And here I am, waiting to recommend Stephenson's Anathem ...

//edit:

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I have a brain, I am a brain, I'm in a brain, but the brain by itself is not me. If you constructed a perfect synthetic brain, you would have no idea whether there was a person in there or not. A brain can do everything that it does perfectly well without having to invent some kind of holographic technicolor theatrical presentation of pleasure and agony based around a particular character, with an idiosyncratic gestalt that seems to animate or resonate it's face, voice, name, handwriting, etc. I don't care how many dice you roll for how many eons, I don't think that the dice will fall into something that wants to live - something that feels pain.

We do not actually know any of that.

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I'm not trying to win an argument, haha. I'm just presenting my observations - which are subjective and objective...just like the rest of the Cosmos.

How is the cosmos subjective except in our assessment of it?

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Just exactly what it appears to be and what we understand to be true...the universe is a deterministic lifeless machine on the outside, and an experience of order and meaning on the inside.

Where and how do those connect?

Oh, and I owe you a PM. Getting on it ...

« Last Edit: May 29, 2010, 06:33:26 PM by Noman Peopled »

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"Deferinate" itself appears to be a new word... though I'm perfectly carmotic with it.-xphobe

Oh, no worries. I'm starting to get burned out on so much talking anyways so the longer the better.

I think that a lot of where we are at odds is rooted in epistemological value. I feel like you have a conviction that the value of a model is directly proportional to it's pragmatic usefulness in making determinations, predictions, developing methodologies, etc.

If you haven't read kcrady's summary of my position, you might find that worthwhile. What I'm trying to tell you, as he puts it, is "the fact that these things cannot be dissected with reductionist methodology does not make them any less real. Rather, the inability of reductionism to make sense of them demonstrates the limits of the reductionist approach".

My theory is that only by going beyond strict reductionism and pragmatism can we arrive at a model which embraces the reality of both the concrete, physical, objective and the abstract. meaningful, and subjective sides of the cosmos which we not only exist in but represent and demonstrate. We are the evidence. We are the method.

I'm going to go through and try to answer specific questions but I really think most of the rest has to do with reduction to empirical criteria as a precondition for consideration and a measure of validity, which I completely accept for the purposes of science working with physical objects and materials, but I reject when dealing with the cosmos as a whole.

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Except it demonstrably doesn't ... so where does that leave the recipient of its message?

In the one demonstration I did throwing the I Ching, it appeared to reflect the situation quite accurately. It can fairly reliably give your intuition a boost.

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I'm still fuzzy on how not making a distinction as sharp as possible between valid patterns recognized and patterns recognized falsely (never even mind interpretation) is desireable, even when only trying to find stuff out about oneself

.It's like the uncertainty principle. If you want sharp epistemological delineations, you can have them but at the cost of a lot of other great values - meaning, numinousity, inspiration, illumination, etc.

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If you mean consciousness, yes we do have some very strong indication that consciousness is strictly limited to neurological networks.

Only if you define consciousness as the activity of neurological networks. What if neurological networks amplify and focus rather than generate consciousness?

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I think it's entirely likely that even the atoms in the peptides in our brain have some glimmer of proto-interiority.

Something to back up that claim (as well as the implication that "interiority" is a productive and accurate concept)?

Because our own interiority can be mapped to peptides and peptides are composed of atoms. Why would the sudden appearance of subjectivity out of nowhere make more sense than a building upon inherent properties of subordinate components. Why not interiority? Doesn't it seem like you are inside of your head, behind your eyes?

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Just as white light hides the full spectrum, ordinary matter may be part of a cosmic schema of meaning.

As may god. Where's the basis?

That is the basis. 1) Matter and energy are intimately related, 2) energy demonstrates that a highly ordered and aesthetically pleasing visual phenomenon can be carried invisibly. 3) matter behaves in highly ordered ways but it is denser and less accessible from the outside than energy. 4) since we know that even energy routinely 'hides' it's inner nature even with no visible place to hide, it seems like one way to explain the coherence that we experience would be that matter and energy my contain order which cannot be accessed from the outside.

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These are concepts that are custom-tailored to be descriptive of some aspect of reality. They are indeed a matter of definition; a circle is defined as an abstract shape with certain properties, as is the square.

I disagree. A circle is an elemental shape which can be reduced, described, and analyzed with certain properties but you don't assemble a circle from descriptions, the descriptions are an afterthought.

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There's no logic without humanity

Basis?

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We will not find an electron that is also a proton. We will not find matter that is also antimatter. What does that prove?

It proves that even in the realm of complete abstraction, there are rules. Not human rules, but ontological rules of pattern itself. Matter or protons are ideas about physical substance, not ideal patterns which exist only as abstractions. If logic were truly only human, then humans could easily imagine a square circle...what's stopping them?

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They're opposites if we apply certain concepts. What follows?

Not sure what we were talking about here.

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Because the opposite of a clear method is an obscure method.

Obscure to whom? How can anyone be sure, even just for themselves, that what's obscure is indeed a method? It is, after all, obscure, and being symmetrical in some sense to clarity makes it neither workable nor desireable.

based on what? what says that an obscure method can't have specific advantages due to it's obscurity or made more effective through obscurity? I know this to be a fact in intuitive matters. You can't force inspiration to happen or put it on a timer or tease it into doing your bidding - it's just the opposite, it only really works when you partially surrender to it's method/madness. This is how art works.

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That sounds nice and all, but I fail to see any reason why we should think the cosmos is "stereo" rather than just is, with us in it.

Because, like you said, words aren't things depending on your definition. A good model of the cosmos has both a side where words are things and one where they aren't.

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Besides, why deal with qualia at all if "nobody needs to do that"?

Because qualia alone makes existence worthwhile. Nobody needs to prove water is wet because it is a self evident truth, but if we want to understand how truth in the subjective universe works, qualia is the main subject that matters.

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That's why I said "brain functions", not "brain".

You can't find any circle shaped brain functions either.

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A stomach is not a living system; it's a necessary sub-system. If it's removed, it dies along with its "host".

But it hums along quite merrily while it's conscious host is in a decade long coma. The brain doesn't need consciousness. It doesn't need to feel things to accomplish survival. The fact that we feel things points to layers of meaningful processes which have little to do with mechanical necessity.

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And this is different from any new age religion how?

It depends on your definition of new age religion. To me it seems much more like psychology or philosophy than religion. It's not a belief system, it's just an interpretation of our numerical symbols. It's psychosemiotics.

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I completely disagree; my subjective perceptions and opinions differ from yours. I don't call them "truth" though. Yellow has nothing to do with the number three other than arbitrary assignement. Seven is not a weird number other than when dealing with its mathematical properties. Just start counting in the infrared spectrum (or on the other side of the visible spectrum) and yellow is not the fourth number any more. Take binary or vigesimal counting system and suddenly other numbers are weird.

Sure, you can use different counting systems and get different meanings. Those work too. As long as there's a coherent system, the results will play out as the consequence of that system.

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It's "wrestling" because it's a shape that we haven't evolved to recognize.

Why? Basis?

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It does have colors; black and white. Apart from that, maybe a subjectively assigned color synaesthetic value. Not truth; perception again. Plus, you can do the exact same thing with nine points. Optical illusions don't even start to prove anything.

The more subjective you get the less about proving things it gets. Pattern recognition. Meaning. Interpretation. That's all there is at the ACME end.

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The periodic table is arbitrary itself.

It's still meaningful.

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And even the site you linked is talking about symbolism, not an innate color logic.

Isn't a symbolism an interpretation of innate color logic?

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Yes, and it does not necessarily tell us anything about ourselves that we didn't already know or about the universe as a whole. It's just a workable way of thinking, far from being perfect or representative of anything but our way of thinking. It may not even be the best available descriptive system.

It's not just a workable way of thinking, it's a root principle of thinking itself. A subjective universal.

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Matter and antimatter do have many things in common, but they're opposites in some relevant respects. Gravity is not opposite to electromagnetism; they too share many features.

Who says opposites don't share many features. Opposites are a pair. You can't pair two utterly unrelated things, and if you could they wouldn't be opposite, they'd be non-sequiturs.

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Right, not the nuomenal universe, but within the phenomenal cosmos the symmetries cross subjective and objective appearances.

Yes, and when I dream, I think I can fly. What of it?

Since your flying does not cross over into the objecitve world, it's not a universal commonality. Symmetry is.

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I agree there, but it doesn't answer my question. Can the existence of god be a meaningful personal truth? If so, how do we dinstinguish personal truth from any concept made-up on the spot?

Sure it can be a meaningful subjective truth, both personally and collectively. I don't think there is a difference between god and any other concept made up on the spot in the sense of it's existential validity, but there is a difference in which concepts spread and thrive and which ones die out which can probably be mapped to some measure of fidelity to subjective architectures. Flying spaghetti monster probably won't ever achieve the memetic strength of Islam.

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You can. Simply redefine the words.Why would I be able to make a square circle if it were objectively unreal? I can't make a 1 a 2. Two concepts can be mutually exclusive rather easily.

Sure you can make a 1 into a 2, like you said, simply redefine the words. Those are more subjective counting symbols Circles and squares need no words to define them. You can't make one into the other because they have a concrete pattern integrity independent of human logic. We didn't make up circles, we discovered them - they were provided for us by our pattern recognition perception. Even a blind person has a perception of a circle. It doesn't have to be visible.

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I have a brain, I am a brain, I'm in a brain, but the brain by itself is not me. If you constructed a perfect synthetic brain, you would have no idea whether there was a person in there or not...

We do not actually know any of that.

Why not?

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How is the cosmos subjective except in our assessment of it?

Our assessment of the cosmos is the cosmos being subjective. Aside from that, every particle, form, and event in the cosmos could have it's own subjective assessment of it in it's own way and we would have no way of ever knowing it.

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Just exactly what it appears to be and what we understand to be true...the universe is a deterministic lifeless machine on the outside, and an experience of order and meaning on the inside.

Where and how do those connect?

Everywhere. They don't have to connect, because they are different 'sides' of the same thing. They can't not connect. They just look different on the outside than they feel on the inside.

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"That which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes–no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe."- John Archibald Wheeler

Oh, no worries. I'm starting to get burned out on so much talking anyways so the longer the better.

Yeah. I've resolved to let a few days pass before each reply.Incidentally, I've also resolved not to reply to any of your posts in other threads touching on the subjects we're discussing here; I'm worried we might hijack any and all of them, else.

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I think that a lot of where we are at odds is rooted in epistemological value. I feel like you have a conviction that the value of a model is directly proportional to it's pragmatic usefulness in making determinations, predictions, developing methodologies, etc.

True enough. My biggest concern is that you don't have to seem to have a method (scientific or otherwise) for discerning personal truth from non-truth.

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What I'm trying to tell you, as he puts it, is "the fact that these things cannot be dissected with reductionist methodology does not make them any less real. Rather, the inability of reductionism to make sense of them demonstrates the limits of the reductionist approach".

I would agree there, but the above problem remains. Science does not marginalize those phenomena (not any more than a physicist marginalizes literature by being quiet about it, anyway), although you of course hold that the SEW does. I say that if it does its no wonder, as personal truths are both less likely to spread and more difficult to use in a demonstrably (in any way) representative fashion. But I do maintain that most people do use mechanisms and approaches to themselves as well as their lives that are at odds with what I understand SEW to be. This is also in line with the psychological findings of the crucial importance of conscious or unconscious emotions in decision-making.

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My theory is that only by going beyond strict reductionism and pragmatism can we arrive at a model which embraces the reality of both the concrete, physical, objective and the abstract. meaningful, and subjective sides of the cosmos which we not only exist in but represent and demonstrate. We are the evidence. We are the method.

We are only evidence of ourselves; our genetically intrinsic methods are demonstrably imperfect, thus the need for a more abstract method. What I think is evidence of anything else than what I think.

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I'm going to go through and try to answer specific questions but I really think most of the rest has to do with reduction to empirical criteria as a precondition for consideration and a measure of validity, which I completely accept for the purposes of science working with physical objects and materials, but I reject when dealing with the cosmos as a whole.

The whole cosmos being the two sides of the coin or the symmetrical spectrum you mentioned, I assume.If so, see above; missing method.

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In the one demonstration I did throwing the I Ching, it appeared to reflect the situation quite accurately. It can fairly reliably give your intuition a boost.

As can any bible passage, or P.K. Dick gibberish. No method to make distinctions in terms of veracity.

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It's like the uncertainty principle. If you want sharp epistemological delineations, you can have them but at the cost of a lot of other great values - meaning, numinousity, inspiration, illumination, etc.

I find that arbitrary meaning and inspiration can be derived just as easily from scientific findings as it can from Tarot. With just as much or little merit. And desirability has no place in a discussion about veracity.

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If you mean consciousness, yes we do have some very strong indication that consciousness is strictly limited to neurological networks.

Only if you define consciousness as the activity of neurological networks. What if neurological networks amplify and focus rather than generate consciousness?

What? I say "there's some evidence for X" and you say "only if you assume X is true"?What if it's a bunch of squirrels in training wheels? I don't know.The activity of neurological network thing has the most evidence right now. Should new evidence surface, I will be sure to take a look at it (assuming I have a job by then). For sure, the amplification or channeling model may be scientifically equivalent to the current ones, but it wouldn't pass Occam's razor; and just because it may be constistent with reality.

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Because our own interiority can be mapped to peptides and peptides are composed of atoms. Why would the sudden appearance of subjectivity out of nowhere make more sense than a building upon inherent properties of subordinate components.

It's neither sudden nor out of nowhere. And systems can demonstrably have properties that their parts do not.

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Why not interiority? Doesn't it seem like you are inside of your head, behind your eyes?

It does seem like that. Hardly surprising considering sight is our single most important sensory input line.

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That is the basis. 1) Matter and energy are intimately related, 2) energy demonstrates that a highly ordered and aesthetically pleasing visual phenomenon can be carried invisibly. 3) matter behaves in highly ordered ways but it is denser and less accessible from the outside than energy. 4) since we know that even energy routinely 'hides' it's inner nature even with no visible place to hide, it seems like one way to explain the coherence that we experience would be that matter and energy my contain order which cannot be accessed from the outside.

Where is the meaning in all that? All I see is information and (potentially) order.Never even mind that your basis is purely conceptual.

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I disagree. A circle is an elemental shape which can be reduced, described, and analyzed with certain properties but you don't assemble a circle from descriptions, the descriptions are an afterthought.

You can't assemble a circle. You can just make shapes that very much resemble one. These shapes were described by humans, resulting in the abstract concept of a circle, which has proven highly useful and representative but is in not a real entity.

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There's no logic without humanity

Basis?

*sigh*Prolly just a semantic mismatch again. There is no discipline of logic without humanity. No mathematical systems. No concept of argumentation.But there is order potentially describable by logic, math, and arguments.

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It proves that even in the realm of complete abstraction, there are rules. Not human rules, but ontological rules of pattern itself. Matter or protons are ideas about physical substance, not ideal patterns which exist only as abstractions.

Of course. If you describe X as humpty and Y as dumpty and X and Y are incompatible, so will humpty and dumpty.

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If logic were truly only human, then humans could easily imagine a square circle...what's stopping them?

The incoherence? Those are mutual exclusive abstract ideas describing mutually exclusive patterns in nature. Why would they be compatible in the mind of an organism wthat evolved to recognize and distinguish patterns?But I do see what you're driving at. Logic as a way of thinking is purely human; but it's also custom-tailored to be representative to some degree of the appearent order of reality. This does not mean the cosmso in its totality adheres to our concepts of logic; but its order is to some degree representable and communicable.

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They're opposites if we apply certain concepts. What follows?

Not sure what we were talking about here.

I was referring to the issue with your notion of symmetry. X and Y are opposites only if certain assumptions are mode, i.e. the axis is set arbitrarily. In one way, a particle and an anti-particle are opposites. In many ways, they are not.My point being that while looking for symmetries and opposites alongside an arbitrarily chosen axis sure can be productive, there's nothing to suggest that our ability to understand and regard something as symmetrical and/or opposing does not in itself allow any conclusion.Your two sides of the same coin matephor, for instance.

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based on what? what says that an obscure method can't have specific advantages due to it's obscurity or made more effective through obscurity? I know this to be a fact in intuitive matters.

That's not what I was driving at; my point was that if it's obscure, you have no way of judging it's veracity, except by empirical evaluation of the outcomes. In other words, again, you have no idea if or why your conclusions are valid on any level.

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You can't force inspiration to happen or put it on a timer or tease it into doing your bidding - it's just the opposite, it only really works when you partially surrender to it's method/madness. This is how art works.

And that's all part of our incomprehension of the workings of the brain/consciousness. Note how art does not and never has had to do with veracity, "only" personal meaning.

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Because, like you said, words aren't things depending on your definition. A good model of the cosmos has both a side where words are things and one where they aren't.

Where did I say that? Words are depending solely on our definitions. There is recourse to the universe, of course, but words with other meanings work just as well, as evidenced by a whole bunch of languages with a lot of semantic overlap, but also a lot of semantic differences.Words aren't concrete things, but they're as real as any pattern or process. They're part of the universe, not necessarily representative.

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Because qualia alone makes existence worthwhile. Nobody needs to prove water is wet because it is a self evident truth, but if we want to understand how truth in the subjective universe works, qualia is the main subject that matters.

What you call subjective universe I would simply call another tiny aspect of the same coherent universe.Qualia are important to us, but that doesn't mean they are true.

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That's why I said "brain functions", not "brain".

You can't find any circle shaped brain functions either.

You can't find words either. You also won't find MS Office if you disassemble your computer, or an eddy if you look at the gas molecules individually. What of it?

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But it hums along quite merrily while it's conscious host is in a decade long coma. The brain doesn't need consciousness. It doesn't need to feel things to accomplish survival. The fact that we feel things points to layers of meaningful processes which have little to do with mechanical necessity.

Yes, no, maybe. Consciousness may be a by-product as mentioned or it may in fact be crucial to our survival as a species.The stomach can survive without its host only long enough to die of starvation without outside assistance. And that's hardly surprising, considering many body functions, including our psyches, are running automatically without us ever knowing.I do get your point - why consciousness? - but I do not expect even a personally satisfying answer without empirical evidence.

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It depends on your definition of new age religion. To me it seems much more like psychology or philosophy than religion. It's not a belief system, it's just an interpretation of our numerical symbols. It's psychosemiotics.

Again, how do I distinguish its degree of veracity from scientology, deism, or some such?You obviously have a well-thought-out construct (leaning quite heavily on language, methinks). They do to. You're saying psychosemiotics; scientology says dianetics. They do not have empirical evidence; neither do you.I'm just trying to determine how you would distinguish the veracity of the outcomes even if it only pertains to you and you alone.

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Sure, you can use different counting systems and get different meanings. Those work too. As long as there's a coherent system, the results will play out as the consequence of that system.

The more subjective you get the less about proving things it gets. Pattern recognition. Meaning. Interpretation. That's all there is at the ACME end.

If it's not about proving anything, why are we talking about truth as opposed to subjective desireability.

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The periodic table is arbitrary itself.

It's still meaningful.

Of course. Arbitrary =/= random.

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Isn't a symbolism an interpretation of innate color logic?

No, it's an interpretation of arbitrarily assigned semantic values to perceived phenomena with no basis at all. Much like the letter "A" has very little to do with the sound pattern recognized as its counterpart. My using a cross or a fish as interchangeable symbols for christianity reveal no innate logic about either; just like my loving someone has nothing to do with rings and a mumbling priest except by semantic attribution.I can't equate "blood is red" with "red innately means danger" anymore than saying "cockadoodledoo" is the actual sound it describes.

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It's not just a workable way of thinking, it's a root principle of thinking itself. A subjective universal.

It is a way of thinking because no matter if it's underlying or not, we're capable of working around it to a degree, and because other ways of thinking are workable in principle.Being a shared property does not make it correct or representative, just again, subjectively desireable (and often not even that).

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Who says opposites don't share many features. Opposites are a pair. You can't pair two utterly unrelated things, and if you could they wouldn't be opposite, they'd be non-sequiturs.

Yes. Hence my problem with attempting to derive any kind of truth or meaning from them without a method to determine which are relevant to the discussion.

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Since your flying does not cross over into the objecitve world, it's not a universal commonality. Symmetry is.

No. It's shared among humans; and the notions and definitions vary wildly depending on context. Symmetry is a shared commonality (quite possibly easily explained by its success in model-building and the consequent evolutionary advantages), not universal. It's a shared concept not necessarily representative of anything; much like languages, it can be said to exist with much recourse to the universe we perceive, including ourselves, but not of the whole universe.Objective? So we do have need for objectifying measures?

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Sure it can be a meaningful subjective truth, both personally and collectively. I don't think there is a difference between god and any other concept made up on the spot in the sense of it's existential validity, but there is a difference in which concepts spread and thrive and which ones die out which can probably be mapped to some measure of fidelity to subjective architectures. Flying spaghetti monster probably won't ever achieve the memetic strength of Islam.

So we're not talking about true truth here, but about what someone thinks it's true. How does the spreading mechanism have any impact on validity?

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Sure you can make a 1 into a 2, like you said, simply redefine the words. Those are more subjective counting symbols Circles and squares need no words to define them. You can't make one into the other because they have a concrete pattern integrity independent of human logic. We didn't make up circles, we discovered them - they were provided for us by our pattern recognition perception. Even a blind person has a perception of a circle.

Circles and squares do need words to be communicable; but not to be understood. The exact same thing holds true for numbers. The knowledge that two is more than one is hard-wired in animals much less prone to abstraction than we are. You can, however, define them in different terms, although the ones in use are shared concepts due to their simplicity.And a blind person has no notion whatsoever about circles except by touching them, just as much as a seeing person has no notion about circles except by seeing them. And abstracting many such shapes into a useful approximation.

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We do not actually know any of that.

Why not?[/quote]Because nobody has tried.

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How is the cosmos subjective except in our assessment of it?

Our assessment of the cosmos is the cosmos being subjective.

That's just a linguistic sleight of hand. Our calling the sky blue is not the cosmos being subjective. It's us being subjective. We're only part of the cosmos and what's universal among humans is in no way therefore universal.

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Everywhere. They don't have to connect, because they are different 'sides' of the same thing. They can't not connect. They just look different on the outside than they feel on the inside.

So what I get from this is that you want to reconcile the objective with the subjective, the objective being our collective making descriptions of what we perceive using well-defined methods and the subjective being what we arbitrarily assign of what we perceive using methods whose very workings are unknown to us?You're basically trying to reconcile a non-system of finding subjective meaning with a system merely describing objectifiables.

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"Deferinate" itself appears to be a new word... though I'm perfectly carmotic with it.-xphobe

My biggest concern is that you don't have to seem to have a method (scientific or otherwise) for discerning personal truth from non-truth.

I have all kinds of methods. Reason, intuition, imagination, memory, doubt, reversal of assumptions, correlation, compare and contrast, modeling, etc.

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But I do maintain that most people do use mechanisms and approaches to themselves as well as their lives that are at odds with what I understand SEW to be. This is also in line with the psychological findings of the crucial importance of conscious or unconscious emotions in decision-making.

Yes. That's part of why I say the SEW needs to expand to embrace the reality of people's lives and not oppose the reality of a rich, meaningful dimensions of consciousness on the grounds that it doesn't like the way it looks on paper.

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We are only evidence of ourselves; our genetically intrinsic methods are demonstrably imperfect, thus the need for a more abstract method. What I think is evidence of anything else than what I think.

That's just an assumption. To me it's obvious that as ordinary pieces of the cosmos, we are evidence of not just ourselves but of principles and processes of the cosmos which support, define, and manage what we are on a continuous basis, both from below and above, inside and outside.

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The whole cosmos being the two sides of the coin or the symmetrical spectrum you mentioned, I assume.

It doesn't have to be my stereo model, I'm just talking about the whole cosmos.

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As can any bible passage, or P.K. Dick gibberish. No method to make distinctions in terms of veracity.

It's not about distinctions, it's about connecting with the universe - dissolving distinctions.

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I find that arbitrary meaning and inspiration can be derived just as easily from scientific findings as it can from Tarot. With just as much or little merit. And desirability has no place in a discussion about veracity.

I'm not talking about veracity, you are. Not to say that there's no veracity to intuitive insight, but that it's often indirect - oblique.

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If you mean consciousness, yes we do have some very strong indication that consciousness is strictly limited to neurological networks.

Only if you define consciousness as the activity of neurological networks. What if neurological networks amplify and focus rather than generate consciousness?

What? I say "there's some evidence for X" and you say "only if you assume X is true"?

No, you're saying "there's strong indications that X is limited to Y" and I'm saying "only if you assume that all possible X is the kind of X that you find in Y".

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The activity of neurological network thing has the most evidence right now. Should new evidence surface, I will be sure to take a look at it (assuming I have a job by then). For sure, the amplification or channeling model may be scientifically equivalent to the current ones, but it wouldn't pass Occam's razor; and just because it may be constistent with reality.

The activity of a neurological network is always going to have the most evidence because we ourselves are a manifestation of a neural network and therefore we identify consciousness with that particular source. We have no impartiality on the subject. Looking for consciousness outside of neurological activity is like looking for a Big Mac in rural India and saying "Bah, there's no food there."

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It's neither sudden nor out of nowhere.

Without some kind of precursor, how is it not sudden?

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And systems can demonstrably have properties that their parts do not.

Only because there are preexisting properties in the universe which define and give rise to emergent properties.

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Why not interiority? Doesn't it seem like you are inside of your head, behind your eyes?

It does seem like that. Hardly surprising considering sight is our single most important sensory input line.

Then why doesn't it seem like we're inside of our eyes instead of behind them?

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Never even mind that your basis is purely conceptual.

Isn't everything that the mind conceives of purely conceptual?

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These shapes were described by humans, resulting in the abstract concept of a circle, which has proven highly useful and representative but is in not a real entity.

I disagree. These shapes were described to humans by the shape of the sun and moon, bubbles, drops of water...all kinds of things. It is an entity indispensable to the cosmos, and more real and more universal than it's transient material contents. What would the cosmos be without any kind of circle or circularity?

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The incoherence? Those are mutual exclusive abstract ideas describing mutually exclusive patterns in nature. Why would they be compatible in the mind of an organism wthat evolved to recognize and distinguish patterns?

So you agree with me that patterns do exist in all of nature, and are recognized and distinguished rather than arbitrarily assigned by humans.

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That's not what I was driving at; my point was that if it's obscure, you have no way of judging it's veracity, except by empirical evaluation of the outcomes. In other words, again, you have no idea if or why your conclusions are valid on any level.

All conclusions are valid on some level, even if it's a superficial emotional/political validity "Because I said so!". There's all kinds of different kinds of qualities to information besides pure empirical objective function. Jokes can be funny. Songs can be sad. Recipes can turn out delicious...

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Note how art does not and never has had to do with veracity, "only" personal meaning.

Yes, no, maybe. Consciousness may be a by-product as mentioned or it may in fact be crucial to our survival as a species.

Even if it were crucial to our survival (and I have no reason to think that it is), consciousness has no business being remotely possible in a purely materialistic universe. Consciousness follows from the laws of physics and chemistry no more logically than magic, omnipotence, or omniscience. It can't just be invoked into existence by a deaf and dumb universe just because it might prove helpful to some species of primate. A longer tail, sure, a faster gallop, definitely, but a lexicon of subjective qualia, perception, verbalizatiion, and semiotic manipulation has no conceivable physical/survival necessity. Every human behavior can be accomplished just as well if not better by a highly developed system of automatic reflexes.

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I do get your point - why consciousness? - but I do not expect even a personally satisfying answer without empirical evidence.

My personally satisfying answer is that why consciousness is the same as why matter or why energy. It's what the cosmos is, it's what it does, and our experience every waking moment is evidence of that. We are the cosmos. Not the entire cosmos, obviously, but what we do the cosmos does through us. There is no boundary or exceptional status to what's in our heads except to us. The cosmos doesn't care.

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Again, how do I distinguish its degree of veracity from scientology, deism, or some such?

You would have to actually try them out for yourself. Unlike empirical objects, with highly subjective experiences you can't tell much of anything from the outside.

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I'm just trying to determine how you would distinguish the veracity of the outcomes even if it only pertains to you and you alone.

The same way you determine the veracity of the outcomes of watching a movie or cooking a meal.

. I'm well aware it's only a hypothesis; but for my argumentation it's merely relevant that pattern recognition demonstrably screws up often, and there's no reason to assume it's not screwing up outside of optical input.[/quote]The link is munched but I found a Wiki on cognitive processes hypothesis that shows optical illusions. I see that as supporting my view that the interior universe uses a completely different language than the exterior. It reveals that our conscious experience is a simulation governed by abstraction rather than a clear window on the external, real world.

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The more subjective you get the less about proving things it gets. Pattern recognition. Meaning. Interpretation. That's all there is at the ACME end.

If it's not about proving anything, why are we talking about truth as opposed to subjective desireability.

Because it's a continuum that runs from OMM to ACME. Both extremes may be only potentially real or meaningful but the middle of the spectrum is substantially real and meaningful.

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Isn't a symbolism an interpretation of innate color logic?

No, it's an interpretation of arbitrarily assigned semantic values to perceived phenomena with no basis at all.

Not at all. If that were true then some cultures would perceive deep blue as a hot, energetic color and yellow as a relaxing, soothing color. They don't. In fact there's been research done showing human responses to colors - beige contributes to anxiety, etc. It's not at all arbitrary. It's a bit blurry and indistinct, but absolutely not arbitrary. To the contrary, I think that our orientation to primary colors is highly influential in early education.

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Much like the letter "A" has very little to do with the sound pattern recognized as its counterpart.

I would have agreed with you but the implications of numerology have led me to consider more exotic possibilities regarding language. The letter "A" may not have had much to do with the phoneme "ayy" before they were part of the English language, but since they are linked for English speakers, they now form a new combined associative pattern, which has it's own weird properties and dynamics which propagate throughout shared consciousness of the language. I know it sounds crazy, and I don't expect you to believe it, but that's how I think it actually is. Names and words are real - as real as a molecule.

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My using a cross or a fish as interchangeable symbols for christianity reveal no innate logic about either; just like my loving someone has nothing to do with rings and a mumbling priest except by semantic attribution.I can't equate "blood is red" with "red innately means danger" anymore than saying "cockadoodledoo" is the actual sound it describes.

Yet hundreds of millions wear the cross, take the vows, and make the intuitive leap beyond the literal into the continuum of subjective interpretation. Why?

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It's not just a workable way of thinking, it's a root principle of thinking itself. A subjective universal.

It is a way of thinking because no matter if it's underlying or not, we're capable of working around it to a degree, and because other ways of thinking are workable in principle.Being a shared property does not make it correct or representative, just again, subjectively desireable (and often not even that).

Working around it can be worked around also though. I agree that ideas being shared or desirable don't make them correct, but being correct is only one narrow criteria of thought. "There are trivial truths and the great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true. " - Niels Bohr

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it can be said to exist with much recourse to the universe we perceive, including ourselves, but not of the whole universe.

The universe we perceive directly and indirectly through tools, measurements, ideas, and imagination is the only universe that exists for us as long as we remain what we are. Our universe is the only part of the whole universe we can ever meaningfully contemplate, and therefore, to us, the whole universe.

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Objective? So we do have need for objectifying measures?

Absolutely. If it's going to be truly universal, it has to manifest subjectively and objectively. You fly in your dreams, that says something about you, about dreams, about how subjectivity manifests in the human cosmos - but it doesn't say much about aeronautical engineering. Symmetry says something about almost everything - subjective or objective.

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So we're not talking about true truth here, but about what someone thinks it's true. How does the spreading mechanism have any impact on validity?

I think that if you can wait long enough, everything which is accepted as true will eventually be replaced by a more complete truth, some take longer than others.

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And a blind person has no notion whatsoever about circles except by touching them, just as much as a seeing person has no notion about circles except by seeing them. And abstracting many such shapes into a useful approximation.

A seeing person can feel a circular button and know that it has a circular shape without looking at it.

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Our calling the sky blue is not the cosmos being subjective. It's us being subjective. We're only part of the cosmos and what's universal among humans is in no way therefore universal.

We're not 'only' part of the cosmos, we're absolutely part of the cosmos. Every thought, ever feeling, all 100% part of the cosmos - as much as a galaxy or a quark. The contents of our subjectivity isn't universal, in the sense that it is defined by what we are and how that shapes our perspective - our combination of cells and stories, molecules and characters, places and times, culture and elevation, humidity, biodiversity, etc. - that is uniquely human.

Subjectivity itself, however, we can see evidence of in other animals, but we can also see that the more different an organism is from us the less consciousness they appear to have. We know that we are not good judges of sentience and given the chance, we would rather make the gods of our own imagination seem real than recognize the humanity in a person from another culture or race, let alone from another species or phenomenal order. Certainly the mechanisms which give rise to consciousness aren't some distinctly human chemistry. The cosmos would surely support consciousness in any recipe which satisfies the biological conditions required for it. The cosmos invented consciousness, not us.

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So what I get from this is that you want to reconcile the objective with the subjective, the objective being our collective making descriptions of what we perceive using well-defined methods and the subjective being what we arbitrarily assign of what we perceive using methods whose very workings are unknown to us?You're basically trying to reconcile a non-system of finding subjective meaning with a system merely describing objectifiables.

The subjective isn't just arbitrary and it's not necessarily a system. To me it doesn't need to be reconciled, it's obviously one thing with two sides. Even two sides is misleading, because it's really more of a continuum. The objectifiables get more and more subjective as you move from physics to chemistry to biology to ecology. The meanings get more objective as you move from archetypes to icons to symbols, words, perceptions, and actions.

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"That which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes–no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe."- John Archibald Wheeler